الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Global climate change is expected to affect the performance of water resource systems according to current indicators and findings and that would pose another problem for agricultural production. Egypt’s climate is expected to get drier and warmer thus pressures on agriculture will definitely intensify. The assessment of Landuse changes has an important role on groundwater management. It can give early warning for planners and developers to protect groundwater resources from depletion and preserve its sustainability.
The area concerned in this study occupies the Southern part of Western Nile Delta region. It is bounded by Longitudes 30° 27\ 33\\ to 31° 00\ 04\\ East, and Latitudes 30° 04\ 25\\ to 30° 35\ 23\\ North and it can be considered as one of the highest priority regions in Egypt to achieve sustainable development in the future. The present agricultural activities in most parts of study area are mainly based on groundwater for irrigation. However, irrigation requirements have become so large that they cause depletion of the groundwater levels. The expansion of land use in different areas can be surveyed by using satellite images.
It was demonstrated that the analysis of satellite images to produce land use maps is relatively cheap, fast and accurate. The results also, showed that change detection map can provide a powerful tool for planning, monitoring groundwater development and help to design a suitable exploration plan. Spatial planning should take better account of effects of land-use change on the groundwater system and define mitigating actions for reducing the negative impacts of landuse change.
In this study, three satellite images of (1984, 1999, and 2011) have been used to derive the historical and the recent land use conditions in the South Western Nile Delta region using ArcGIS 10 software.
Unsupervised followed by supervised classification were separately applied to the acquired satellite images using Erdas Imagine 9.2 software. The classification results were further improved by employing image enhancement and visual interpretation. Also, 150 random points were chosen as ground truthing to calculate and check the accuracy of the classification. The results reveal that the total accuracy values of the land-use classification maps were 83.71% and 79.33% for 1999 and 2011, respectively. Generally, the accuracy values obtained were sufficient to meet the monitoring needs of the change detection in the study area. Five land use categories namely cultivation, desert, urban, road and water were identified and mapped. Results indicated that the major change was in the barren land (desert) which changed into agricultural land.
The change detection results show that agricultural development increased by 178,850 feddan (around 95.5 %) throughout the study period (1984-2011). It was also found that the increase in urbanization by about 30,500 feddan during 1984-2011 was predominantly due to encroachment into traditionally cultivated land at the fringes of urban centers.
Groundwater numerical model (MOD FLOW) revealed that a slighting increase has being occurred at the North of the study area at Markaz Badr district with a total water level rise of 1.5 m during the period from 1999 to 2011. Continuous decrease in the groundwater levels is mainly restricted in the study area specially in Dina farm, Khatatba road and Wadi el Farigh (Moghra aquifer) reaching a total water level depletion of 14m during the period 1999 to 2011 due the continuous uncontrolled development and extensive groundwater exploitation which exceeded the allowable drawdown according to the development groundwater plan.
The study area was divided into three subareas: A, B, and C, where A represents Kafr Dawoud and Sadat City, B represents Desert road, Khatatba road and South Khatatba and C represents Dina farm and East Wadi el-Farigh. The Percentage of increasing cultivated area in the subareas A, B, and C during the period (1984, 1999 and 2011) is 30.4%, 21.4%, and 28.9%, respectively. The development of reclaimed land in those subareas was naturally accompanied with maximum drawdown in groundwater level of 3, 5, and 13 meters, respectively as subarea C is mainly based on groundwater for irrigation, while the other subareas are irrigated by conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater.
The analysis of climatic data showed stability in meteorological conditions -to some extent- during last 20 years, as there were no severe changes in temperature or rainfall measurements and that may lead to increase cultivation which mainly depends on ground water in the study area. Groundwater discharge would be the most agents that affected by increasing cultivated area which lead to groundwater level depletion.